Ecuador Mining News Mid March 2020
Country News
Company News
Titan Updates Copper Duke Targets
I've mentioned Copper Duke before and will likely mention it again. While Dynasty's flagship asset is the Dynasty Gold project, to me the real interesting one to me is Copper Duke. Dynasty Gold was an operating mine that was one of the worst run mines ever, trucking ore over 100 miles among other issues. As a result Dynasty Gold is really less exploration and more project development. Copper Duke on the other hand really is an underexplored exploration project. I also like porphyries because the size is so massive. If an exploration company drills one hole into the right spot in a porphyry it changes the entire value of the company instantly. Ecuador is one of the few countries in the world where undiscovered porphyries that outcrop to surface can still be found. It's like traveling back in time to a bygone era, but wilth all the modern exploration technology at your disposal.
Titan has a pretty map of Copper Duke that includes magnetics now. The shapes of their different named target zones has changed with the magnetics influencing the surface sampling and geologic mapping based targets. They are going to go back and do more surface sampling based on finding from geophysics before drilling is anticipated to start in 2Q of this year. All of this is a full exploration program and a great process.
My only question is why if Titan is looking for porphyries, which often have a lot of depth, would they not use a geophysics with better depth information? Here's a brief study of ZTEM used on three well known porphyry systems. MobileMT seems to also gather good conductivity information at depth. My working theory is that the Dynasty Gold Project is the primary target and since it is a shallow potentially open pit project the depth information isn't particularly helpful there, and since they already had the helicopter in the area they had it fly the Copper Duke project in the same batch, after all some geophysics is better than no geophysics.
Cornerstone Defines Drill Targets at Espejo Project
Most of Cornerstone's market value comes from its minority stake in Solgold's Cascabel project. If you like Cascabel as a project Cornerstone also has exploration upside with several other projects both 100% owned and joint venture with various partners.
This particular news update is about the joint venture with Ecuador's state mining company ENAMI. Two of the three ENAMI JV exploration projects remain stalled, and Cornerstone adds some details that are worth reading on those two stalled projects. In November 2020 surface sampling resumed at the Espejo project. Sometimes going from zero to a crawl is newsworthy. Cornerstone puts a date on drilling Espejo as 4Q 2021 or 1Q2022. I wouldn't be surprised if those drill dates get pushed again or happen earlier, the impediments to starting exploration drilling are non-technical in nature.
Company Interviews
Challenge and Opportunity in the Mining Sector In Ecuador [text]- Merlin Marr from Salazar Resrouces wrote an article giving an honest take on Ecuador mining and politics.
Mining Journal interviews Solaris CEO [video]- good Solaris story overview
Aurania PDAC reel [video]- Short & Pretty
Cornerstone PDAC video - missed the conference, get some content free
Disclosures
Of the companies mentioned in this article I have long positions in Salazar and Aurania that were purchased in the public markets. I have not received any compensation or special access to private placements from any of the companies discussed.